BTB #280: The Tablet Generation

The world’s first generation of tablet-using children is toddling toward day care, pre-school, and kindergarten with their e-readers tucked into their backpacks. These kids and their e-book usage habits may have a great deal to tell a generation of publishers who only thought an apple was something you brought to school for the teacher.

“Children have been raised with Nintendo DSs in their hands, playing games constantly. Books have been put aside until recently, with the tablet industry booming,” Anna Belle Abraham of Playtales tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally. “Kids are now being introduced to books in a format that they feel a bit more connected to. The element of digital gaming, combined with publishing, definitely goes in the favor of publishing, but also doesn’t leave behind in any way the gaming industry It’s definitely hand-in-hand now.”

Last week, New York City hosted the Kidscreen Summit, the world’s leading conference on the business of kids entertainment, attracting nearly 1,600 attendees from around the world. “People here are really focusing on the fusion of television with the tablet device. We’re seeing them fused together to produce one super-ideal product for children,” Abraham says.

At Kidscreen Summit, PlayTales, announced the launch of a dynamic bookstore app for iTunes and Android platforms. UNICEF Spain also launched their second book with PlayTales, featuring Lakers basketball star and UNICEF Ambassador Pau Gasol as the narrator for English, Spanish and Catalonian versions. Proceeds of the book will be donated to UNICEF Spain.

In January, for the Publishers Launch DBW: Children’s Publishing Goes Digital conference, CCC’s Michael Healy noted that “CCC is responding to the new digital marketplace and the opportunities it offers to rightsholders by developing new services that are directly applicable to the changing needs of children’s publishers. It recently launched, for example, its Republication License, a solution that not only allows rightsholders of all kinds to offer buyers a broad bundle of rights in a single, simple transaction via the CCC website, but also allows them to have the flexibility on pricing that they demand in a marketplace that’s changing so rapidly. CCC also recently launched its Permissions Acquisitions Service, aimed not just at rightsholders but also any organization that wishes to outsource its permissions acquisition activities.”